Shadowy individuals behind ANC court challenges – Makhura

Premier David Makhura ahead of delivering the Gauteng state of the province address, 2018. Picture: Tracy Lee Stark

While revealing the newly elected provincial executive committee, Makhura said some litigants confessed they ‘had been used’.

ANC Gauteng provincial chairperson David Makhura says shadowy individuals were behind the recent court cases involving unhappy ANC members who took the party to court to challenge electoral results or to attempt to interdict a conference from taking place.

He said this was exposed when the party insisted that those who took the ANC to court had to pay the legal costs should they lose the matter in court. The province faced challenges from some members in Ekurhuleni who attempted to interdict the weekend’s provincial elective conference in Gauteng from going ahead, claiming processes had not been followed before it was held and this had violated the ANC’s constitution.

Makhura told a post-provincial ANC conference briefing in Johannesburg the fact that the ANC insisted that the losing members must be made to pay the costs had an impact, because many members then were reluctant to take the party to court.

He said some had come forward to confess that they were being used by some individuals to challenge the party. “Some of them say to us ‘we were used’,” Makhura said.

He said the ANC had established that although most of the litigants were unemployed, they were able to hire expensive legal counsel to represent them. According to him, when the members had lost in court, the individuals who promised to give them money to pay their legal fees had run away, leaving the ordinary members to shoulder the huge financial burden.

“We always went to court to convince the court that our processes were fair and beyond reproach. We always went because we give our members a fair time, and we have strong, transparent and fair organisational processes. We tell them that we got nothing to hide,” Makhura said.

Makhura attributed the successes to the work of the ANC national dispute resolution committee headed by deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte. He said the committee did sterling work in fighting divisions in the party.

As a result of the committee’s behind-the-scenes efforts, disputes were resolved among the party structures to the satisfaction of all sides at different levels.

He said they were able to win most of the court challenges brought by disgruntled members because the committee ensured that all processes were fair and that the ANC constitution was adhered to throughout the period leading up to the regional and provincial conferences.

The committee did sterling work to prevent disputes in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal by ensuring that procedures were properly followed, which resulted in those who took the party to court in the two provinces and Limpopo losing their cases.

In the same briefing, ANC national executive committee member and former party presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma says patriarchy is still a huge problem in South African society but the struggle for women emancipation continues.

“The struggle for women emancipation is not won, it is an ongoing struggle. We cannot say we are happy with women representation, but the struggle continues,” she said.

Dlamini-Zuma, in answering a specific question about whether they were happy with gender equality in South Africa and the fact that Gauteng ANC had only one woman, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, elected into the top five office-bearers, said they were clearly unhappy with the situation.

She said: “We are happy that at least we have 18 women in the Gauteng PEC [provincial executive committee]”.

Makhura also expressed concern that the conference elected only one woman at the top. He said they would have liked to see at least three women in the top five instead of one.

He said while the PEC was not empowered to change the situation as it was a conference democratic process, the leadership was not happy with it.

“The leadership undertook to reverse this outcome in the next conference,” he said.

Makhura further said there was no dissenting voice at the conference on the fundamental issues that affected Gauteng people including e-tolls, the land issue and matters affecting the youth and women.

He said most of the resolutions taken at the conference were still being refined and cleaned up, and would be released later.